Trinity
by Unoriginality
Summary: <html><head></head>Alphonse comes to understand what God means.</html>


_"I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three."_

-Unknown

Alphonse knew that his brother was not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination. He was a scientist, rational and almost painfully logical about most anything, and was proud of his intellect and the power it gave him, or as proud as lives such as theirs would let him be.

So it surprised him to find his brother in that cold and abandoned old Drachman temple.

He'd been missing for almost an hour; it'd taken Alphonse awhile to notice it, but once he did, he was concerned immediately. Usually if they got separated it was easy enough for the two of them to find each other again, but this was dangerous territory. The Drachmans were known for disliking the Amestrian military, moreso than the average Amestrian citizen, and they had a bit of a reputation for being cutthroat barbarians.

Of course, nobody they'd encountered so far had lived up to that reputation, but Alphonse didn't like dealing with unknowns when it came to his brother's safety. He could mostly escape any battle unscathed, as long as nothing happened to his blood seal, but his brother was another matter entirely.

There was nearly a foot of snow at the entrance to the old building, and if not for the fact that his brother's distinctive bootprints walked a trail leading inside, Alphonse would not have bothered to enter it to look for him. With a sigh of frustration as he paused inside the entrance to shake the snow out of his foot _(this is going to rust later if I don't remember to dry it)_, Alphonse ducked in out of the cold wind outside, not bothered by the stinging north wind physically, but anxious to get out of it all the same.

"Brother?"

His own voice seemed to be muffled by the cold and the ice, and he mentally frowned, glanced one last time outside at the tracks in the snow, then made his way towards the interior of the building.

His steps were dull and muted as he walked, and he looked around in fascination at the designs, archaic and arabesque in design; ancient serpents coiling around the sun and the moon, goddesses of the harvest and brides of the dead, battles between gods and harmony between the divine and the mundane, all in intricate balance with each other decorated every single inch of the stone walls and Alphonse wondered what sort of religion it was that the people of the North held in reverence. It didn't seem like anything he recognized from the Ishbalites in the East.

The corridor opened up to a large inner room, circular in design with no signs of any seating. In the center was a marble statue, as white as the snow and Alphonse imagined that it must've been perfectly formed at one time, before the elements wore down and broke away pieces of its features- a lovely woman seated on a flower blossom, cradling a crane as an infant.

At the statue's base was his brother, head tilted back to look up at what was left of the woman's face, so perfectly still he might've become a part of the statue, a faithful worshiper at a goddess's feet.

His brother was anything but a worshiper though, so he pushed that thought aside and tentatively took a step farther into the room. "Brother?" he called to the older boy almost timidly, afraid to break the moment, for as surreal as it seemed to him.

"I think I've figured it out, Al," was the answer, a strange one at that, and Alphonse wanted to raise an eyebrow he no longer had at it.

He stepped closer, looking down at him curiously. "Figured what out?"

"Why some people still try to believe in these things," he motioned vaguely up to the statue in front of them.

Alphonse turned his head and looked up, studying the goddess's features more closely now. Her eyes seemed kind and gentle, even through the ice and snow and age that showed on the marble stone. She looked like a mother, soft and lovely and caring, a crane in her arms rather than a child.

He wasn't quite seeing the answer his brother had found, and he knew it, so he looked back down at him. "Why?"

Edward's lips quirked ruefully before he answered. "They want a parent. They want a mother or a father that's there, even when theirs are gone."

Something inside that hollow armor knotted up at the answer, and he glanced back up at the statue that his brother's gaze had never left the face of. "Someone to take care of them and protect them?"

Edward gave neither a confirmation or a clarification, he merely stood there a moment longer before turning away. "I'm guessing, though," he mumbled, then shook his head. "Come on, Al, let's get outta here. I'm freezing." He started to walk away.

Alphonse watched him a second, then looked back up at the goddess. "You know..."

He heard his brother's footsteps stop behind him. "Yeah?"

"I'm glad I don't need a god to follow." He turned to look at his brother. "I don't really need a parent anymore, either. I got something better."

Edward frowned visibly, then tugged his coat closed tighter, huddling into it a bit and pulling the hood up. "What's that?"

And not for the first time since he'd been sealed in that armor, Alphonse wished desperately he could show his brother the smile his heart was feeling, so he tried to send it silently to his brother's own beating heart. "A big brother."

Before Edward had much of a chance to react to that beyond that sudden, off-guard softening in his eyes that warmed the cold, hollow armor that Alphonse called his body now, he stepped over to him. "Come on, you look cold. We should find an inn and get you something warm to drink."

It took a second, but a smile worked its way across Edward's shivering lips, the gesture far more in his eyes than on his lips, and Alphonse could feel it from his heart as much as the one he'd tried to give him. "Yeah, the weather up here's brutal," the elder Elric agreed, ducking his head under the hood and starting for the entrance.

Alphonse felt that smile in his heart again, and followed his brother wordlessly.


End file.
